


Whole

by Lilys_Eyes



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Coop and Laura go home, Cooper is the White Lodge, Gen, Might be AU, Might be complete rubbish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 07:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15383913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilys_Eyes/pseuds/Lilys_Eyes
Summary: Cooper finally takes Laura home.





	Whole

**Author's Note:**

> Please forgive me if this fic seems confused, it´s been a while since I saw the original series and I´ve only seen the new episodes once, so I wouldn´t be surprised if I misremembered quite a bit. Maybe you can take it as kind of AU if it doesn´t make a 100% sense within the continuity of the show?

The moonlight filters through the trees above them like through fluttering black lace. At first the girl seems wrapped up in those dancing shadows as she approaches, before they finally reveal her pale, wary face. For a moment, Cooper is reminded of milky plastic sliding away from still, ashen features.

There is an odd tension riding on the rustling breeze, not the crackle of electricity…yet, but the thin, discrete hum of unspoken expectation.

„Who are you?” the girl asks, looking at him, looking away and then looking again. Cooper doesn´t answer, the mere thought of speaking lodging in his throat like thistles.

“Do I know you?” Again he doesn´t reply. And what could he possibly say anyway? “No, you don`t know me, but I know you, I´ve known you longer than you´ve been alive and when we first met, I was a young man and you were a corpse, wrapped in plastic”?

There are no words to express what they both have endured. No words that could sum up those years of suffering. No words to express what has bound their fates to each other even beyond death.

Cooper just gazes at the girl, feeling oddly still. Feeling that if he were to stand there forever like this, in the whispering night- time woods, gazing at the living Laura Palmer, he would be able to bear it. Feeling that if the two of them were never to speak or move again, it would not become hell for him.

“I´ve seen you in a dream,” Laura says and the wariness slowly fades from her eyes. As if a dream could ever be reason enough to try to trust a complete stranger. And she does, Cooper can tell, she does try to trust him. For a tiny moment, the burden of all those years doesn´t seem to weigh quite so heavily on his shoulders.

He too has seen her in a dream, a dream in which a young man met the saddest girl in the world. They didn`t fall in love or live happily ever after, for the girl had forgotten what love was and the young man had never been able to remind her, because the girl was dead. But she stayed with him, stayed when the entire world disappeared.

Cooper holds out his hand, knowing she will take it.

“Where are we going?” Her voice is still a little hoarse, but now not with fear.

For the first time, her hand is warm as he takes it in his.

“We´re going home.”

He has no idea if there even can be a place like that for her anymore, but that doesn´t matter now. If there isn´t, he will build it from his own flesh and bone, his own breath and spirit. If it´s the last thing he ever does, Dale Cooper will get Laura Palmer home.

For a while there is only the fall of their footsteps, crunching over rocks and dry leaves and Laura´s too rapid breaths, creating an oddly meditative accompaniment for their journey through the darkness. Only gradually does Cooper become aware of something else, something other that is slowly awakening in that darkness. A low, almost unnoticeable hum in the ground beneath their feet.

Laura feels it too, beginning to falter slightly beside him. Cooper quickens his pace, grasping her hand even tighter. They must not stop, even though he knows that they cannot run from whatever is out there. It permeates every leaf and every pebble, the very air itself. The hum is growing stronger, now a cavalcade of phantom tanks, droning past in the distance.

Laura`s shoulder bumps against his as she instinctively draws closer.

The first deep, ominous rumbling stops them both dead in their tracks.

“What was that?” Laura whispers, her eyes vainly trying to penetrate the surrounding darkness.

“I don`t know,” he says honestly. No, he doesn´t _know_ …

Cooper strains his ears, holding his breath for a moment, yet finds himself unable to determine even just the direction whence the noise is coming.

Beside him, Laura has extended her hand as if running it through invisibly flowing water, a worried frown on her pale face. A forlorn little radio operator, feeling for a signal in the white noise.

The hum has become a tremor now, an odd almost-shifting beneath their feet. Like enormous, rusty gears, slowly grinding to life. A line from Blake´s _And did those feet in ancient time_ suddenly pops into Cooper`s head.

_Among these dark satanic mills._

That was how it felt, dark satanic mills, grinding beneath them.

“We have to keep moving.”

He pulls her along with him.

“But …do you even know where we´re going?” Laura´s voice is now high and frightened.

No, if he is honest, he doesn´t, not anymore. The trees seem to glide around them, almost identical pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, swiftly being joined and taken apart again. For all Cooper knows, they could be walking in circles. He closes his eyes for a moment, shutting out the disorienting movement around them.

Was he going in circles? Were they going to end up where they began? If only he had more time to think.

“Oh my god…what is happening?” Laura is now almost clinging to him, her nails digging painfully into his palm. He shushes her more vehemently than he means to. She looks at him, startled but also with something like anger now taking shape in her eyes, Cooper notes with absurd satisfaction.

“I´m sorry,” he says to no one in particular,” I`m afraid I… haven´t been quite myself lately.”

Lately, it seemed easier to know who he _wasn´t._ For some reason, he suddenly feels very old.

Laura´s eyes are very wide as she raises her hand, and for a second Cooper thinks she is going to slap him, but she just mutely points to something behind him.

A blood- red glow is beginning to seep through the trees like mist.

And suddenly, Laura screams. A shrill, almost hysterical sound that abruptly ceases again, her lips now forming only silent words. But Cooper can hear her just fine.

_Fire walk with me._

“No!” he just says resolutely, almost angrily.

He is not sure she has heard him, her face now slack and expressionless, like that of a person in shock. Despite the chill, sweat is glistening on her face, mingling with the tears that have now begun to fall.

Cooper fumbles for his handkerchief with his left hand. Laura blinks rapidly as he hands it to her, gleaming white and freshly pressed, as if she´d completely forgotten about him. She limply dabs at her face with it a few times, before crumpling it up in her hand.

The red glow has now begun to creep up the trees, shivering tentacles, wrapping around their trunks. Cooper strains his eyes, trying to find a spot that is not yet being consumed by that heatless fire.

He has no idea what will happen if they try to confront it. Would it simply swallow them up? Annihilate their souls because of their imperfect courage? Or would it devour them just to spit them out again, twisted and corrupted beyond recognition?

Maybe he had led Laura to a fate far worse than death. Maybe he was going to be the one to succeed where even BOB had failed. Maybe all it had ever taken was his imperfect courage.

This time, when he stumbles on, Laura refuses to follow. Yanking at his arm, she frantically tries to extract herself from his grasp. The ground is now shaking so hard, Cooper can hear her teeth chatter between her labored breaths.

“Let me go! “she screams, her face almost feral now.

But Cooper won`t let her go, he can´t.

“You have to stay with me!” he shouts,” grabbing her narrow shoulders. “It´s trying to separate us, don`t you see?”

He knows it´s the truth the moments he says it. It has always been the truth. It has always tried to separate them, even before he first came to Twin Peaks, separate them by death, by time.

All fight seems to leave her at his words, her shoulders sagging beneath his hands.

“Please let me go…I don`t want to burn,” she whispers brokenly. But burn she would, they both would and this time forever. And this time, it would be his fault. Because Dale Cooper just could not let Laura Palmer go. Why, in all these years, had he never been able to let Laura go? She was just one girl, one life of so many that ended in tears and despair and violence every day. Hadn´t he accepted death and suffering as the price we paid for living years ago? Hadn´t he?

The glow keeps closing in, gaining in intensity, the moon´s silver light now being drowned out by its bloody glare. Laura stares at it with the transfixed dread of a rabbit facing a snake and for a second, Cooper has the absurd idea of simply taking the petrified girl and hurling her across that fiery barrier, as if it were nothing more than the harmless paper flames of a school play.

But there is nothing he can do, Cooper realizes. No heroic gesture left to make anymore, no “run, it only wants me!” Even sacrificing himself would not save Laura Palmer. He briefly considers simply charging into that evil glow anyway.

He turns to the trembling girl at his side. “I´m sorry, he says,” gently brushing the damp hair out of her eyes, “you were so much wiser than I´ll ever be.”

Laura had come to accept what he never could, the inevitability of her death.

Fat tears are streaming down her cheeks, making her depthless eyes shine like twin moons. And suddenly Cooper sees something in them, something he has never seen before.

Cooper sees himself. Not the middle- aged man in a dark suit, but _himself!_

How could he have been so blind? How could he not have known from the start? For a moment he is ashamed of himself. Didn´t Dorothy Gale say, “There is no place like home”? Dorothy, who was Judy. There was no place like home for Laura Palmer. _No place!_

The ground beneath them quakes so violently now, the trees, still dancing around them, begin to groan ominously. The red glow, that isn´t fire, but that will burn them anyway, now perilously close.

Sobbing, the girl hangs her head, her hair brushing against his shoulder.

He shakes her less gently than he intends to.

“Laura, look at me, look into my eyes, don`t you see?” he shouts.

Her eyes are wide and frantic as she stares at him. “ _Look!_ ” he whispers.

And she does.

Slowly her sobs abate, being replaced by almost breathless stillness. And everything else falls still as well. The very air around them seems to freeze as time grows slow like honey. The light of the moon, suddenly cutting through that blood-red glow again, bathing them in silver, the tremors beneath their feet dying down.

And Cooper knows that Laura _sees_. He knows she sees the angels reflected in his eyes. The angels, who had never gone away, who were always hidden inside him, waiting patiently until the time came to reveal themselves. The angels who had sent him to Twin Peaks to save a dead girl. And now Cooper sees them too, hovering in the still air around them, their hands clasped in eternal adoration of what was holy. Of what was whole.

Laura´s face is a perfect mask of awe and wonder.

“Who are you?” she asks again, but Cooper knows that she knows already.

“Laura,” he says gently,” you are the key.”

That was why she had suffered so unspeakably, that was why she had died. She had been too dangerous.

Somewhere beyond the angels, inhuman voices roar with rage and pain.

Laura´s hands rise to rest lightly against his face, now somehow again that of a young man.

“I saw you in a dream,” she whispers again.

Cooper smiles, tears burning in his eyes. The fiery glow is retreating into the darkness.

“Yes, “he says simply, opening his arms to her.

They seem to stretch from horizon to horizon now, extending far beyond his fingertips, the beginning of the last step on their way home.

For the first time in twenty- five years, Laura Palmer smiles at Dale Cooper, tremulous and heartbreaking.

“Will you…will you let me in?” she asks almost shyly.

Cooper throws back his head and laughs with pure joy, laughs in the presence of angels, before his arms are finally around her, before they become one with the trees and the sky and the ground. Irrevocably they meld with every atom, suffuse it with their essence, finally restoring the balance.

 

The key turns in the lock and the white door opens, the fire walks no more.


End file.
